Monday, November 19, 2012

The boy-wonder mayor of Osaka City, having absorbed Shintaro Ishihara's Taiyo (Sun) Party and no doubt absorbed the subsidy money for the political parties in Japan (it's a generous subsidy from the national government, funded by taxpayers, 250 yen per citizen every year), was just going to declare the end of the City Assembly session today (November 20, 2012) so that he can focus on the national election.

But on the last day of the session, a meeting of the Public Welfare and Health Committee was held, and an assemblywoman from Liberal Democratic Party submitted a motion to suspend the test burn of disaster debris from Iwate and continue to study the health effect from the debris burning. The motion passed, quite unexpectedly.

So, people who have tirelessly been campaigning on-and off-line against the debris burn in their city (for that matter, they've been against any city, calling the bureaucrats and officials everywhere and visiting them to talk in person) and have almost given up because of the boy-wonder just does what he wants, are stunned.

It's still unclear what will happen next. It seems LDP of Osaka City is saying the burn will be stopped, but Komei Party is not so sure and says if the mayor wants to do it he will just do it. As far as they know, and I can gather, the test burn may be put on hold until January at least.

I wonder what will happen to the container ship on route from Iwate to Osaka.

By the way, the boy-wonder mayor, after having a haircut that shows his forehead to fit in with the Ishihara's group, now looks like just a tired middle-aged man. He's campaigning for his party, while remaining as the mayor of Osaka City.

He looked like this, until very recently:

According to Hokkaido Shinbun (11/20/2012), he apparently said to the crowd in Osaka (rumors have it that his crowd is well-paid):

"Try us once" sounds like the end of a commercial for an under preforming brand of soap. The boy-blunder looks like he used to belong to a Beatles tribute band (he looks like the Ringo of the group "drumming is my middle name"). His new look is typical salaryman fashion I guess he wants to show everybody his serious side so they know he isn't all fun and games. His new look says,"look at my forehead, now do my bidding".

The test burn halt may be a ruse to give everybody the impression the government cares about their opinion enough to study the issue further. The container ship will probably be offloaded and the containers will sit idle in an empty local field (next to a school no doubt). Eventually it will be burned but they probably won't worry about it until after the elections. It is really dumb to export the debris for incineration it should be done exclusively in the areas near the plant where they know people won't be returning to anytime soon, unfortunately greed will always trump commonsense.

Who was the thoughtful woman referenced in "...an assemblywoman from Liberal Democratic Party submitted a motion to suspend the test burn of disaster debris..."

This is someone we should support by providing her with more human stories about the human rights abuses brought about in Fukushima by the nuclear mura and the Japan government. Perhaps some of the Fukushima women could visit with her? Perhaps we could send her links to videos?

If she's tilting to the correct side of this debate, we should encourage her, support her, and help educate her. Converting the thinking of the government officials is what all of the protesting, blogging, and public speaking is about. If it looks like we might be saving one soul, winning over one mind, let's embrace the opportunity to make it stick, rather than throw away a possible victory because we are worried it might be a ruse.

Is there any organized group protesting the test burn? Which assemblymen and women are supporting and protesting it? Who can we send e-mails to to lobby against the test burning? If anyone has this information, please post and forward to friends via social media asking them to contact these officials asking them to permanently stop this stupidity.

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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